


Bouquet

by thedragontheprincessthewriter



Series: The Journals of Mandy Milkovich [7]
Category: Shameless (US)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-16
Updated: 2015-02-16
Packaged: 2018-03-13 07:05:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3372275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedragontheprincessthewriter/pseuds/thedragontheprincessthewriter





	Bouquet

She knows it's probably an unpopular opinion, but Mandy likes cemeteries. Or, at least, she likes the only one she's ever been to, where her mother is buried.

There is something calming about being there; hardly anyone comes to this cemetery, hardly anyone visits her mother. Except for her, in secret, all these years.

Her mother is still her best friend. Death, Mandy learned at an early age, could take a lot of things, but she'd be damned if it was going to take away her relationship with her mother. She'd like to see anyone try. 

So here she was, every Sunday, making her way amidst abandoned graves. She knows the path all too well, her feet walk there of their own accord, like this is a road they've  walked hundreds of times, even before they knew this was a place where they would someday have to come.

She finds a flower in the ground where she's walking, small and a pale pink, a spot of color in all this gray. She picks it up and tucks it behind her ear. 

In the twilight, she can see two darkened figures standing in front of her mother's grave. Their melancholy is palpable even from afar, and they're holding hands.

“What the fuck?” she mutters to herself. But she's not afraid of the living, much less of the dead, so she continues walking without slowing her step.

The figures are too familiar. They cause an ache in her chest. The sun burns Ian's orange hair, and she figures it had to happen someday. They were bound to meet, her only two friends.

She remembers talking to her mother about Ian. Of course she didn't say anything back, she never did, but she must have known all along, that he wasn't for her.

Mickey turns around to the sound of her footsteps, and his blue eyes widen in surprise, in guilt.

“Mandy? I thought you were gone.”

She shrugs. “I came to say goodbye.”

The three of them stare at the grave in silence, and all of sudden she feels resentful towards her brother. “I'm surprised you remember which one is hers.”

He shrugs. “I'm surprised you do.”

“I come here every week, you asshole.”

He half-smiles. “Oh, so you're the one who picks up my cigarette stubs, huh?”

Mandy's shocked into silence for a moment, but then recoils. “Really, Mickey? Smoking on your mother's grave?”

“She's dead, Mandy.”

They know, they've said it to each other often enough, a constant reminder in the Milkovich house, where everyone mutters it like a mantra. _She's dead, she's dead, she's dead_.  Like they have to keep reminding themselves, because her presence was so ethereal to begin with that one could become confused and believe she's still there, roaming the halls.

“I know she's fucking dead, Mickey. I wish you would stop saying that.”

Ian reaches over, puts his arm around her shoulders and pulls her close. She rests her head on his shoulder a little and smiles. “What are you doing here, redhead?”

Ian says nothing, just glances at Mickey, who looks infinitesimally uncomfortable. 

“I wanted him to meet her,” he says, finally, like that should explain it all.

Maybe it does.

She wonders if maybe it's the same with Iggy, Colin, even her father. If they've all been coming here all these years, trying to make friends with a ghost, each one of them  pretending they don't remember, leaving no indicators of their presence.

Mandy wants to think it's that way with all the graves here. People coming and going, but too afraid of admitting either, and that's why there's never any flowers or candles, any  prayers. Just people standing, in front of abandoned (or not so abandoned) graves and crying like she has, with no one to tell their secrets to.

She takes the flower from behind her ear and places it on top of the grave. Probably the first flower her mother's ever received, in life or in death. 

She wishes it was white, but it doesn't matter now. Ian squeezes Mickey's hand. 

Like her mother used to say, things are always the way they're supposed to be.

 


End file.
